My Andela Journey

Sunday, 18 June 2017

One morning, I stumbled on a post
from TechPoint that Celestine Omin will be leaving Konga for Andela. I had met
Celestine in church(HoneyStreams Christian Centre - Calabar) in 2011, so humble
and quiet, I couldn’t have guessed what he did until after he came up to testify of being
the winner of the Google Chrome Extension Challenge held in Lagos in 2011.
Immediately after service, I followed him and talked with him about my interest
in programming, he encouraged me to continue, giving me reasons to push harder,
recommended some materials for me and promised to be of help anytime I asked.

Long story
short, I didn’t keep in touch, it wasn't long before the struggles of my
academics caught up with me - I was in my first year studying Computer Science in University of Calabar. I took his advice though, learnt HTML, CSS, PHP,
Javascript, MYSQL. In 2012, I built a CBT application for JAMB, WAEC, and NECO.
Although the app functioned well, my computer soon had a problem, and I lost
all my files. For months, I didn’t have a computer to work with and that was a
serious blow to my programming career and passion.

Now, back
to Celestine, hearing he was moving to Andela, made me ask the big question -
who is Andela? I read a little about Andela and immediately made up my mind
that I wanted to work with them; I read they worked with python a lot, so I
started reading up on Python. It wasn't long before an opportunity came and I applied
for the Paid Internship with Andela. My code couldn't pass the first test, I
did all I could and it didn't work. I decided I will bid my time, learn more
about programming and apply again. It was during this time that the Andela
Beginner Android Scholarship came up and I applied and got taken.

Android
development had always been a dream, but the fear of not being good at it had
actually eaten deep without my knowledge. I had often made excuses as to why I haven’t
come up with my own android app. My journey into programming has been filled
with trying so many programming languages, and working on the one project that
will make all the difference had been a challenge. In 2014 I worked on Four (4)
applications for students projects including - a School Library System, a
Result Computing System, a system to send results to students via SMS, A course
Registration System and my own Project in 2015 for providing a report of all
development projects carried out by the government. I was still not satisfied;
I wanted to be able to create plugins for Chrome, Firefox, CorelDraw, Android
applications that will change how we share information. Ideas kept coming but
the skills were "far from reached" so I dug deeper, and the deeper I
dug, the farther I felt from reaching my goal. All this created a kind of fear
in me.

When I took
the Udacity’s Google Android Development
course, I did it with a goal to understand how Andelans think about programs so
I would pass the test for the paid internship. I only realized how much fun I had
gotten into, after I built the first app. It didn't do much but
it was fun, working with the layout and struggling to position the different
views on the parent view.

After the first app, everything became so easy, I finished the entire
course and did my projects in less than two months. The Udacity courses are
taught so simple that learning the principles behind what they do is quite
easy, the more I learnt, the more I tried to implement what I learnt in other
ideas that came to my mind, soon I had mastered it. Before the end of the
course I had done the Android Multi-Screen App Course on Udacity and was moving
forward and that is when tragedy struck.

My phone I used for testing and sharing Internet got bad, my modem got
blown, with no source of Internet or testing my apps for almost a month, it
became almost impossible to submit the projects I had worked on. With the
little resources I had, I gave another phone out for repair and it never came
back. Frustrated, I almost gave up, but the passion that had been built by the
things I had already been able to accomplish in such a short time did not let
me, so I kept pushing till I got another modem, submitted the projects I needed
to submit and would often borrow phones to test my apps.

Testing my app with Facilitator - Nsikak Thompson

The final meetup (5.0) was the crown of it all. I had looked forward to
it; hearing about the Hackathon, only added to the fever and I was well
prepared. To conclude the matter, I came first in the Hackathon and won a brand
new 10400MAH Romoss Power Bank and my Facilitator added his own personal special gift.

Gift from Andela

Thanks to Andela, Chimdindu Aneke, and Nsikak
Thompson - my facilitator, My Team mates SS-Team-11 (CodeDroid), and all the
guys who supported me especially those who shared their Internet with me and
phones. God bless you.

Please comment,
share, like, and read my next post on what my journey with Andela has taught me.